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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27930883">Soft</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yesfir/pseuds/yesfir'>yesfir</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cuddling &amp; Snuggling, Everything is Fine and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Mush, Gentle Kissing, Kissing, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Coital Cuddling, Sort of? - Freeform, They're gay your honor, also, also relationship talk, also technically like, and cuddles, and retroactively admitting feelings, but idk, don't look at me don't talk to me, don't really feel like that needs a full underage tag, i'm making a joke it is funny, implied/referenced consensual underage make-outs, it's the day after, like at allllll, listen mostly it's just them being dumb, mentions of their shitty failed first relationship, mentions trickster mode, quite literally fluff, we all need some sweet shit sometimes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:26:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,233</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27930883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yesfir/pseuds/yesfir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yesterday, you and Dirk had a very important conversation. Today, you find out just how soft his hair is in the morning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jake English/Dirk Strider</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Soft</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/akgerhardt/gifts">akgerhardt</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i was going to write stuff that is more time-sensitive and has plot and stuff, but then SOMEONE had to make think of dirk's messy morning hair, and now this happened. i am not responsible for this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm</em><br/>
<em>Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Back in the game, the first time around, there had been no opportunity to sleep together.</p><p>Well, you don’t actually mean sex, though you suppose that one is debatable too. It’s not like you’d been completely chaste, great Scott no! But, you think with a soft smile and a bittersweet twinge in your chest, you’d both been rather young and inexperienced, after all. There had been an awful lot of messy kissing and awkward groping under shirts, and a fair amount of, uh, rubbing. And embarrassingly quick resolutions to the latter, which neither of you really ever mentioned, but that certainly didn’t stop you very long from giving it another good old college try.</p><p>But what you mean is that even when you were making your thoroughly leftfooted attempts at figuring out intimacy, actually falling asleep with each other was distinctly off the table. Most of the time you and Dirk had been on your own, which meant one of you had to stay awake by necessity, or risk being ambfuscated by another scurrilous skeleton with your metaphorical pants down. (Literally speaking, that only happened once, when the both of you had risked getting just a tad more frisky than usual, and after that one time Dirk had refrained from doing something like that again.) The few times you met up with Roxy and Jane, well, suffice it to say that even you hadn’t been quite so tactless as to snuggle up to Dirk right in front of them.</p><p>Anyway, he hadn’t slept much at all, regardless. He’d never properly got into the habit.</p><p>Once the whole ordeal was over and you entered the world you’d created, well, you were neighbors and saw each other every day, but things between you had been… tenuous, to say the least. You were struggling with trying to figure out where you stood with Dirk after being together, getting broken up with, going off to fight, seeing Dirk <em>dead</em> and realizing how the world stopped with him, it all stopped with him, and then getting him back again. Every day you saw him, you wanted to tell him, you were desperate for him to know that it wasn’t that you never loved him,<em> of course</em> you loved him, and you’d messed everything up because you hadn’t been sure how to, hadn’t been sure that you could in a way that was good enough for Dirk. You’re still not sure. But you regretted never actually telling him as much, and every time you glimpsed the scar on his neck or he made a joke about Dave cutting off his head – so several times every day – you were reminded of that you’d come close to never having that chance again.</p><p>Every day, you didn’t tell him. He’d broken up with you, after all. Before you could open your mouth and get the words out, you remembered through the multicolored swirl of trickster-addled memory the betrayal on his face as he poured out his heart and all of his hurt in one messy, overwhelmed, painful tirade. You recalled that you hadn’t even had the faculties to give him the apology he so rightly deserved. It’s not like you’d been viewing him through rose-colored glasses; you knew there were things he’d done wrong too. He’d kept pushing you every which way, not giving you any clear directions but constantly niggling away at your thoughts and action as if nothing you could do was good enough. Not to mention that it hadn’t been unreasonable of you to doubt his affections when he just never wanted to <em>talk </em>about his feelings and just kept throwing more philosophy-babble in your face when you tried. You know. But even so, he hadn’t deserved for you to hit him right in his insecurities like you did. You can’t fool yourself into believing that you hadn’t known it was going to hurt.</p><p>What a slap in the face it would be, then, after the way you treated him, to come out and all but beg him for a second chance, even if that wasn’t actually what you wanted out of your belated confession. Well, fair game, it’s what you<em> wanted</em>, but not what you were expecting. You just wanted him to know, and you understood perfectly well why wanting that was selfish. You know you’re a selfish person, but not so much that you’d risk hurting him again.</p><p>So days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years. Getting to be friends, actual friends in real life who do ordinary friend things together, is more than you’d ever expected and probably more than you deserve. You’re aware that you’re not always great at it, and that when he’s struggling he could use someone who’s made of stronger mettle. When you’re having the ol’ morbs, you want time to yourself with no interruptions to sort things out, and then you want to be distracted. Dirk, on the other hand, <em>pretends</em> like he wants to be alone, but actually he wants someone to chase him down and practically arm-twist him into talking about it. You’re not always the right person for this. Both Roxy and Jane are better at it, and though more oblique in his style, so is Dave. But you hate always deferring all the heavy duty Dirkwrangling to them!</p><p>(You asked Dave how he does it once, in a fit of desperation. You don’t really understand him, he’s like Dirk with all the edges filed off, and without those edges it’s absolutely impossible to understand what he means with what he says. You feel like he’s always making fun of you. But you asked anyway, and he raised his eyebrows and said well, he’d had practice. Rosewrangling, apparently, is pretty similar. You suppose you can believe that.)</p><p>You’ve done your best, and for what it’s worth, you think you’ve gotten better at it. You and Dirk have definitely grown closer again, and you’ve tried to tell him what a relief this is without directly referencing your ill-fated affair. He’d answered with a vague, <em>Yeah dude, same,</em> and you for all the world you couldn’t figure out if he understood what you meant and was just not interested in talking about it, or if he somehow misinterpreted you. Anyway, your unabated and unhandy feelings for him aside, it had been relatively smooth sailing on the way to repair your friendship until yesterday, when he had to go make an offhanded joke about you being straight.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>You stared at him as though he’d just presented you with another of his disembodied heads.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: I… beg your pardon dirk i think i just misheard you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: What?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Well i should think its actually really rootin tootin obvious what! I mean i know it wasnt for very long sure and perhaps wont go down in history as a great romance... But even so i am pretty friggin sure that you still remember us being together!!!</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Well, obviously I remember that. But don’t worry, I’ve fully come to terms with the fact that I manipulated you into that whole mess. Man, you should see my therapy bill. Except therapy bills aren’t actually a thing on this planet; I get to torture that perfectly nice woman for free. But in the hypothetical scenario that they were, let’s just say that immortality might not offer me enough time to get out of debt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Anyway, you don’t have to pretend you were into it just to spare my feelings. I have already doused my ego in the ice-cold knowledge that you weren’t, and that I was never going to be the blue space-furry of your dreams. I’ve accepted it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: It’s okay.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>You wanted to scream. It was the first time you were finally talking properly about your relationship after all that time, and this was apparently his takeaway? Really? His face was neutral, of course, though you’re not so fallen off the hay wagon that you couldn’t catch that slight bitterness at the end, or the way his head was turned just-so, clearly indicating that he wasn’t looking directly at you.</p><p>You honestly couldn’t believe it. You’d never gone through with your confession of love because you’d felt it was redundant, because you didn’t want to make it harder for him to forget it all and move on. You’d accepted that he’d probably always think that you’d been a cad, that you’d used him because the options were pretty slim on the ground; you’d been determined to let him think so because you’d thought that it would hurt less to blame you. But this? You were not actually going to stand for this kind of malarkey.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Dirk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Yeah, still here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Im gay dirk.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>Silence. Absolute silence. You caught the small twitch of his hands as they momentarily stilled on whatever old project he was currently trying to augment, only to be forced to move once again. Was he upset?</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Good for you.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>Ohhhh yep, yessir, definitely upset.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Cripes dirk i honestly have no idea how you managed to get to that conclusion. Well i guess i <b>*</b>do* but that doesnt make it any less preposterous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: I know we belly-flopped pretty spectacularly but that was because i was fifteen and an idiot and well if were to be honest about it you were a bit of a handful yourself!</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: But not because i didnt want to be your boyfriend you absolute horses ass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: I was wholeheartedly into you as you say and i know i fucked things up seven ways from christmas but i dont actually think i was all that bashful about liking you.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>Dirk took a deep breath and put down his screwdriver. Even he wasn’t going to keep pretending to work when he was clearly not even looking at what he was doing anymore.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: And all that damn talk about pretty girls and beauties and- and fucking Neytiri?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Oh phooey like you’ve never said anything you didnt actually mean to save face or look cool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Anyway again i was fifteen. Sometimes a fella needs some time to figure things out!</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Its just that while dating another fella maybe isnt the best time to try to do that haha.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>Silence. Once again, there was complete and utter silence. You fidgeted and watched your best bro’s stony face, sure that you must’ve done some absolutely irreparable damage to your relationship – <em>again</em> – and maybe this time you’d finally fucked it up for good. Then Dirk suddenly bent double as if he had a stomach cramp, causing you to panic and rush forward to help him, only to find that he was laughing. You blinked. You’ve seen him laugh briefly from time to time, a magical sharp exhalation and fleeting smile that always makes you weak in the knees, but this was different. He was actually shaking with laughter.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: … I…</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: I really f...ppfffff.. fucked that one up, didn’t I?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: I think thats what youd call a collaborative effort old boy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Shhhit okay okay fuck, I can… I can breathe. Fuck. Let me just…</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: So you really…?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Well yes of course.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Head over heels arse over teakettle absolutely smitten.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Honestly i guess i dont get to sit on any high horses because its not like i wasnt really insecure about you liking me at the time and that was certainly part of the problem. And i wasnt entirely sure about my own feelings either i have to admit. But once i looked back at it all it seemed pretty obvious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: But by then it was too late haha. I couldve kicked myself but thats just how it goes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>Dirk had looked up at you then, just as frozen in shock as you had been at the start of this conversation. You stared back, pensive, noticing the faint stubble on his cheeks and the smear of oil right at the sharp angle of his jaw, his slightly cracked lips parting to let out a soft breath that disturbed your fringe and tickled your face.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Too late?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Are you shitting me now?</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>That was yesterday. Today, you’re waking up next to him for the first time ever, which brings you right back to your current private ponderings. He’s still asleep, his scarred back shifting slightly with each breath, but you can’t actually hear him. He’s an incredibly silent sleeper when he actually sleeps properly, almost eerily so. You lean in further, and with your ear hovering close to his face you can just manage to catch the faint whispering of his breath against the pillow. You smile and sit back, not wanting to disturb him, and absently register what a difference time has made. The old Dirk, the Dirk you’d met in the game, would’ve been awake with his sword in his hand by now.</p><p>You’re glad to know he feels safe now, or at the very least safer.</p><p>Neither of you had been in any state to put clothes back on before drifting off to sleep, and you feel quite comfortable sitting around naked next to his sleeping form. You’re not ashamed to admit that for a couple of years, in between growing out of the clothes you wore when your grandmother died and actually finding the stash of clothes she’d apparently brought along for you to wear, you’d run around that island as naked as the day you’d been spawned out of the slime-imprint of another version of yourself. Actually, had you been naked back then? Perhaps not, you honestly don’t know. It’s not something your grandmother had ever felt was important enough to mention. You suppose you could ask June, but it’s a bit of a strange topic to just bring up.</p><p>Either way, you don’t feel self-conscious at all, not even when you think back to what happened last night; if anything you feel rather pleased with yourself. Neither are you minding the view. Dirk has part of the sheet wrapped haphazardly around his hips and draped a little bit up his back, making him look for all the world like an olde worlde painting of some god or other. He’s sleeping on his stomach, his cheek propped on one arm and the other flung out across half the damn bed, which is why you’re balancing precariously on the small sliver of it he has left for you. He’s definitely a man who is used to his space, you think fondly, and just make yourself hover slightly above the sheets to make sure you don’t accidentally overbalance and take a spill over the side.</p><p>You can’t study all of his sleeping face like this, although you still let your gaze linger lovingly on the long eyelashes of one shut eye, the smattering of freckles across his nose, and the way his mouth is kind of smushed up by how his face rests against his arm. You notice that the oil stain is still decorating his jawline, and decide you’re just going to wait and see how long it takes for him to notice.</p><p>The best part, though, is his hair. Roxy had mentioned something about him being messy-haired when he woke up after the trickster escapades, but you honestly hadn’t fully appreciated the full scope of what was implied. Gone are the meticulously sculpted angles and the funny aerodynamic shape, gone are the sharp spikes and the damn-near bulletproof shell of styling products that usually encases every strand. Underneath all that, Dirk’s hair looks like a cloud, the carefully bleached and maintained tresses curling and tumbling all around his face, casting lacework shadows over his nose and cheeks. He looks positively angelic, haloed by that beautiful mess of pale gold that catches the morning sun and reflects it, making it look like it’s glowing.</p><p>He’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. Scars, oil smear, ugly tattoo and all.</p><p>Your patience wanes you you, and so you lean in, pressing a small kiss to his cheek. Then another, and another, until he finally stirs.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Hey.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Your breath stinks, do you know that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Nah, stay. Didn’t say I wanted you to go anywhere, did I?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>You snort out a laugh against his skin, and then nip at his ear in punishment. It feels like such a natural thing to do, and when you catch a tiny flash of an amber eye squinting at you and see his lips twitch slightly, any last anxiety you might’ve harbored melts away. Things are back to how they should be again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: Did you know…</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: You look like an angel like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: What, terrifying and possessed of way too many faces and eyes? Damn, you know how to compliment a man English. I mean that sincerely, by the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: No you pillock i mean with your hair like this. Its so soft.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>You run your hand through his curls to demonstrate what you mean, and he tenses up slightly. Then he wrinkles his nose in disgust.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: I’m a mess.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="jake">Jake: No no i *just* said i liked it dirk dont be like that. You should have it like this more often.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Over my dead body. Literally over my dead body. Fuck, not even then; every time I’ve died my hair has at least still been fucking impeccable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: Anyway, I can’t risk anyone finding out about this, so I guess there are only two options. Either you swear not to tell a living soul, or I’m going to have to kill you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="dirk">Dirk: This isn’t personal, you understand. I’ve made the same deal with Roxy after the whole trickster debacle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>You roll your eyes, and then take off your glasses once more so that you can kiss him. You <em>both</em> have a mild case of morning breath, but you couldn’t give a single rotten fig. You just keep running your fingers through his hair, telling him how beautiful he is and how much you love him in between kisses, partly because it’s true and partly to see him squirm. As much as he protests, though, and tells you that you’re a complete embarrassment and that he doesn’t need all that sappy shit, none of that changes the way he absolutely melts into your arms at your words. None of it takes away that faint smile he can’t quite hold back, half incredulous and half relieved.</p><p>You don’t quite know when the light of the sun in his hair turns into the light from your skin, swirling and dancing like a living thing, painting wings in the air behind him as he straddles you and grins down at you, sharp and beautiful even in your somewhat fuzzy no-glasses vision. Messy, breathless, and yours. Your Dirk, your best friend, your first love and your last. All you know is that if perfect moments exist, this is one of them, and you intend to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. The world, your past, Dirk… they’re all full of angles and sharp edges, and navigating them can be hard. But here and now, you can allow yourselves to be soft.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>quote from “hey that’s no way to say goodbye” by leonard cohen</p></blockquote></div></div>
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